Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to improvements in mobile telephone networks' Short Message Service (SMS). More particularly, the present invention is related to systems and methods for administering, monitoring and controlling short codes such that the short codes can be employed consistently across different networks.
Background
Short Message Service (SMS) is a convenient and easy to use messaging application available to mobile telephone users. SMS offers a new way to communicate by sending text or data messages between mobile phones or between a mobile phone and information devices, such as a personal computer (PC), a PDA (personal digital assistant), or a handheld email/calendar organizer (e.g., a wireless email device). Messages are composed of words, up to 160 characters in length for Latin alphabets (about 30 to 40 words) and 70 characters for non-Latin alphabets like Arabic and Chinese. To send, text messages are keyed into a mobile phone keypad or other information device. Received text messages are presented on the mobile telephone's screen.
Usually, messages are delivered almost immediately, even when the mobile phone is in use. However, if the phone is turned off, for example, or if the user is in an area without cellular coverage, messages are stored in the network and delivered as soon as the phone is switched back on or the phone enters an area that has coverage.
Introduced in Europe and the United Kingdom (U.K.) during the mid-1990s and in Asia soon thereafter, SMS encountered great enthusiasm, especially among teenagers and young adults. And although SMS had originally been conceived as a paging system, users quickly adapted text messaging for their own objectives. By the late 1990s, GSM carriers in both Europe and the U.K. had connected their networks, allowing their subscribers to exchange text messages across other GSM carriers. In 2001, 700 million mobile phone users worldwide sent 20 billion messages every month, making SMS the fastest growing service in the wireless industry.
Typically, messages are addressed to another telephone via the telephone number belonging to the recipient's mobile telephone. On the other hand, a portion of messages that are sent via SMS are not sent to another telephone or PDA as in a Person-to-Person communication, but are instead directed to a central location. While the central location could have a regular 10-digit telephone number as does a typical mobile telephone, SMS messages directed to a central location are often so-directed using a short code address. A short code address is a convenient short number that identifies a central location to which an SMS message can be sent. A typical application of short code use is Tele-voting in which, for example, a television program flashes on the screen instructions to “Send an SMS message to 8012 to vote yes.” In the United States, exclusive ranges of available short codes have been assigned to each of the several mobile telephone service providers to be used at their discretion. Consequently, the market penetration for, for example, a Tele-voting application, is limited because the designated short code will operate on (or only have meaning to) a particular mobile telephone service provider.
In other words, if the television program flashes a single SMS short code on the screen, only the votes of users who happen to be customers of the service provider that “owns” that short code will be received. Thus, any resulting vote will necessarily be skewed, since only a segment of the viewing population will have the opportunity to vote.
The foregoing use and associated problems with this type of short code use is meant to be exemplary only. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that there are myriad other uses for short codes, but all such uses would still have the deficiency of having short codes restricted to a particular service provider.